


The Only Fox in the World

by CoffeeWithConsequences



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Addiction, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Casual Sex, Drug Addiction, Drugs, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hate Sex, Healing, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Rehabilitation, Sex, Therapy, learning to live, learning to love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-25 12:32:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14977235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeWithConsequences/pseuds/CoffeeWithConsequences
Summary: This is a three-part story exploring how Jack fought his way back from his overdose, not just in terms of hockey, but in terms of allowing people to love him, and loving them in return. It features both friendships and sexual relationships, both OC and canon. The first two sections are pre-canon, the last will follow the canon storyline.Please heed the tags. Warnings for drugs, overdose, anxiety, self-harm. Please let me know if you see something I should have tagged that I haven't!





	1. The Land of Tears

**Author's Note:**

> “For me, you are only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me and I’ll be the only fox in the world for you.”
> 
> The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint Exupery

The first layers Jack wrapped around himself were physical. One of his earliest memories is being in bed, scared of the dark and the sounds he heard and the thoughts in his head, and wrapping himself as tightly as possible in his sheet and blankets, feeling that each layer he put between himself and the world made him a little bit safer. Lying in his cocoon, he thought of his father, carefully wrapping tape around his hockey stick, or the gentle way his mother had wrapped an Ace bandage around his arm when he sprained his wrist. He thought of the boxes from when they moved house, all the glasses and dishes wrapped in layers of white paper. Wrapping things made them safe.

As Jack got older, the layers he put between himself and the world changed and grew. He insulated himself first with routine, fighting the homesick waves that hit him when he was at a far-away hockey camp, or staying with a billet family, with doing things the same way every day. The same breakfast, the same clothes, the same silent prayer before he took the ice. His mother was frustrated by his insistence on the same shoes, just in a new size, every time he had a growth spurt. Knowing he could count on things to be the way he expected insulated Jack just a little bit from the growing pressure and chaos of his world.

The next layer was hockey itself. No matter what else happened, no matter how loud his brain yelled, no matter how afraid he still was, on the ice things made sense. As he grew into a teenager, hockey became not just a game Jack loved, a game at which he had an increasingly phenomenal skill, but something behind which he could hide. He could wrap himself in hockey--playing it, talking about it, thinking about it--and save himself the anxious, awkward need to do the things that seemed to come so easily to other people. Jack was aware, dimly, of his mother’s concern that he wasn’t enjoying his adolescence, that he didn’t seem to have non-hockey interests, but she didn’t understand. Alicia was bright and happy and confident. She didn’t need a barrier between herself and the world--Jack did.

Jack was fifteen when he finally spoke to his parents about his anxiety. He hadn’t planned to, but his general fears had met his new hormones head-on, and he started having panic attacks. While neither of them really understood, they loved him, and were concerned. They found a child psychologist, then a psychiatrist. Jack wasn’t good at therapy--he never knew what he was supposed to say--but the medication they put him on helped. It was a new layer between Jack and the world, and it was probably the most effective one yet. Unlike his routines or his dependence on hockey, this layer was easy to erect, and it could be strengthened as easily as taking another pill. For the first time since he was a small child, Jack felt normal.

The next layer was unintentional. At sixteen, Jack met Kent Parsons. He didn’t realize until his therapist pointed it out years later, but Kent was Jack’s first real friend. For his entire childhood, Jack’s acquaintances had been separated into teammates and competitors. Kent was both, but he was also something more. He made Jack’s stuttering shyness easier, meeting it with not condescending kindness or derision, but a kind of good-natured disinterest. Kent was good at hockey--he’d soon be great--and Jack immediately respected him for that, but there was something more between them within a few weeks of their first meeting. Jack couldn't name it at the time, but he’d realize later that the unfamiliar feeling he had with Kent was the joy and gratitude of someone finally seeing him, and liking him anyway.

At first, the layer Kent wound around Jack was a blessing. Easily confident, Kent was a social buffer between Jack and the rest of their team, the rest of the league, the rest of the world. He spoke for Jack when Jack had no idea what to say, and helped him figure out what was expected of him off the ice. The press had always been interested in Bad Bob Zimmermann’s prodigal son, but by the time Jack and Kent started playing together, the interest had ramped up to something that made Jack sweat and stutter even with his beloved pills on-board. Kent helped with that, easily answering questions, chirping, and taking the pressure off Jack’s shoulders.

Kent was also Jack’s introduction to the next layer he erected--alcohol. It had always been around--Bob and Alicia both drank, and they were the kind of parents to allow Jack a half-glass of champagne on New Year’s, or a few sips of wine at a dinner. Jack hadn’t ever given it much thought. When he started hanging out with Kent, though, Jack started going to parties, starting learning to tolerate the taste of cheap beer and over-sweet mixed drinks. Being drunk was amazing. Even more than his pills, it muted the world, both inside and outside Jack’s head. Drunk, he was still quiet and shy, but it didn’t hurt, it didn’t worry him. Drunk, he felt like a normal person.

The last season Jack played in the Q was a relentless pressure cooker. Kent felt it too, now, and his once-easy companionship was fraught. They drank more. Jack took more pills. Then they started having sex, and a new layer went up.

It was Jack who started it. Kent may have, eventually, but he hadn’t yet. Jack knew he was attracted to boys as well as girls. He’d known for years, but it was never something he took much time to consider the implications of, beyond knowing that telling anybody was a bad idea. Even as his pubescent hormones hit, he simply had too many things on which he had to focus--his sex drive was mostly an annoyance, something he took care of himself, as part of his routine, as uncomplicated as brushing his teeth or showering. The closer he and Kent got, though, the more he found himself fantasizing about a hand other than his own. Their relationship was oddly physical from the start--wrestling and hugging and punching each other’s shoulders. The step between there and kissing, wildly and messily, while horribly drunk, wasn’t as far as Jack would have expected it to be.

Once they started, they went fast. Neither of them had any experience with it, but they were close enough for trial and error to be as funny as it was embarrassing. They careened toward each other wildly, young and scared and usually fucked up. It was dangerous and it left scars. At the time, though, Jack felt protected by it, safe inside the secret.

The night it all came crashing down wasn’t that much different than any other night. The draft was in view, coming right up ahead. Jack and Kent were both nervous, but they were also elated. They’d done everything they set out to do. They should celebrate. They went to a party, they drank, they fucked. Then they fought about nothing, like they’d been doing more and more lately. It wasn’t a big thing, something that would have been forgotten by morning. Kent stormed out. Jack had a panic attack.

The panic attacks hadn’t ever really gone away. The meds helped a lot at first, then less over time. The friendship was the same way. As the end of season pressure mounted, they increased. As he and Kenny made increasingly stupid, dangerous choices, they increased. For the first time in ages, though, Jack was having one while alone. He and Kent had become inseparable, and usually Kent was there to talk him through it--he wasn’t great at it, but he never bailed. This time, Jack had to make it stop on his own. Realizing that soon, he and Kenny would be headed to separate teams and he’d have to be alone all the time, Jack’s panic escalated.

Later, when people asked if Jack was trying to kill himself, he never quite knew what to say. He was trying to make his brain stop. He was drunk and hurting and he couldn’t think. He was alone and scared. He knew what he was doing was dangerous when he emptied the pills into his hand, but he’d know what he was doing was dangerous for months. This didn’t really seem any different.

Jack didn’t know until much later that Kent was the one who found him on the hotel bathroom floor, unconscious and barely breathing. The image haunted him. Whatever harm they’d done to one another, he would never deny that Kent was his first friend, his first lover, and the first person who seemed to understand how much Jack needed without being told. What he did to Kent was horrible. With that guilt, Kent became not a layer between Jack and the world, butt something in the world from which Jack needed protection.

Waking up in the hospital, and then spending a torturous few days detoxing, stripped away every one of Jack’s protective layers by force. For the first time since childhood, he was alone and afraid and there was nothing between him and the rough hospital sheets. Nothing between him and his father’s disappointment. Nothing between him and his mother’s fear. Nothing between him and the world.

When you’re a nineteen year old drug addict, rehab isn’t something you spent a lot of time thinking about. Jack was aware it existed--a few of his parents friends had been through it. He knew what it was and what it was for. Still, he was shocked when, after a few days in the hospital, his mother told him that’s where he was going. He knew he’d missed the draft, and was aware of the publicity he was getting, much as his parents had tried to shield him from it. But he hadn’t really considered what came next.

He hadn’t argued. There was nothing with which he would have argued at that point. He’d given up all agency, simply doing what his parents and the doctors and nurses ordered. When they needed blood, he stuck out his arm. When food was put in front of him, he ate. Otherwise, he stared at the wall and thought of nothing.

Once he was there, Jack liked some things about the rehab center. It was quiet. Nobody cared who he was. There was no press. Slowly, Jack was able to wind himself back up in his old defense, routine. Every day in the center was the same, and Jack took comfort in knowing what came next.

Other things about the rehab center were torture. Even after the physical withdrawal had passed, Jack was desperate for his pills--he had long since forgotten how to manage without them. When his doctor’s decided that he was going to need some level of medication, even if benzos were out of the question, they started experimenting with combinations of antidepressants and mood stabilizers. Some killed his already lacking appetite, some made his mouth dry, but mostly they made it harder to think. His anxiety was as crippling as ever, but now new problems piled on top of it. Therapy was as horrible as it had always been. Jack felt small and young and guilty and disappointing.

After ninety days, they declared his new med combination stable enough to leave the facility. Jack didn’t want to go. Much as he never intended to be in rehab, he’d grown used to it. The change in routine that going to his parents’ house would require--not to mention the potential access to press, as well as his parents’ own sad eyes--terrified him. He had to go, though. So he wrapped himself up as tightly as he could, in his shut-down mind, in the smallness he allowed his life to be, and braced for the change.

The first few weeks in Montreal were nearly as terrible as detox. Jack was aware every minute of how closely he was being watched, of the expectation that he would implode. His parents didn’t know what to say to him. Kent called. Jack wouldn’t speak to him, and eventually he stopped calling. His father suggested ice time, and Jack spent an hour on the bathroom floor, unable to draw a full breath. He concentrated as much as he could on doing the same things, in the same order, every day. His meds still made him feel fuzzy, but he was getting used to it.

It took months for things to really improve, and when they did, the progress was slow. He started to say more than a few words during his endless therapy appointments. His doctor made another medication change, and it seemed to help. His mother looked a bit less tentative. When winter finally set, his father set up the backyard mini rink and Jack forced himself out onto it. It was only hard for a few minutes. It was the only thing Jack had been truly happy about for months. He thought he’d lost everything, but hockey was still there.

Eventually, Jack started volunteering to coach kids. He never would have expected to be good at it. He would have assumed he’d been too harsh, too competitive, too much like his coaches had been. He was, instead, almost endlessly patient. It took awhile to realize it, but there was no pressure. The kids just wanted to play, and were happy for him to help them. They didn’t expect anything more.

Making decisions never came easily to Jack off the ice. There was too much uncertainty, too much opportunity to be wrong. It took months for him to finally talk to his parents about next steps. His mother had mentioned college as a possibility, but hadn’t pushed. His father had been largely silent on the issue. When he told them he thought he wanted to go to Samwell, though, they were both supportive.

The support wasn’t without a cost. Jack knew his mother’s enthusiasm was genuine. She’d enjoyed her time there, and she liked the idea of Jack having a college degree. From his dad, the acquiescence to the Samwell plan felt more like giving up. Jack knew that choosing college, and especially choosing a college as relatively unknown in the hockey world as Samwell, made his path to the NHL, if it still existed, much longer. In truth, though, he was unsure that path was ever going to reopen. Even if his hockey skills all returned, he’d missed too much time already. Beyond that, Jack couldn’t help but think that hockey had been part of what almost killed him once--he wasn’t sure he could ever get there again.

Though his parents and their friends tried comically hard to shield him, Jack knew Kenny had been drafted first, to Las Vegas. He knew Kenny was, in essence, in his place. He didn’t begrudge him--not yet. Mostly, he felt relieved that it wasn’t him out there in the desert alone. Jack’s ambition had largely been replaced by fear.

After months of slow progress, Jack backslid a bit in the weeks before he was meant to leave for Samwell. The same fear he had when coming out of rehab was magnified. He would be leaving everything he knew--his parents, his home, his country. After spending so long secluded he was even out of the habit of speaking English. He would be in a new place, with new people. Above and beyond that, though, he’d be expected to play hockey. Once again, people would be watching.

He was still not comfortable with therapy, but he’d forced himself to at least try. He spoke haltingly to his therapist about his worries. They worked for weeks on coping mechanisms. They talked extensively about ways to minimize the stress in his life, ways to limit the interactions she called “triggers.” They talked about nutrition and sleep and routine. They talked about coping mechanisms. Jack figured he was as ready as he was ever going to be.

Jack started Samwell with as many layers as he could get wrapped around him, determined to stay inside, stay protected, stay safe. His plan was to keep his head down, stick to his routine, play the best hockey he could, and earn his degree. He didn’t think at all about his relationships with other people. Those had never been his strongest area anyway, and he had to cut out everything that wasn’t necessary. He had to keep himself even-keeled and undistracted. Which he might have done, at least for a bit longer than a few weeks, but then came Shitty.

How anybody could willingly call themselves Shitty was beyond Jack, but that’s how he introduced himself on the first day they met. Not only were they teammates, but they lived on the same floor--many of the first year athletes were shoved into the same dorms. Shitty was so, so loud. Jack couldn’t stand him. After more than a year of quiet seclusion, the very timbre of Shitty’s voice made Jack flinch. Jack avoided him when he could, but between hockey and the dorm, they were too often in each other’s space. Plus, Shitty was the aggressive, hypermasculine type of friendly that Jack had dreaded in his teammates his entire life.

Shitty’s mustache and his growing flow and his clearly private school accent and his excessive drinking made Shitty appear to be every inch the bro, but, once Jack started actually paying attention to what he said, he realized there was more to it. Shitty was expressly political in a way Jack had no experience with. He was constantly reading the news, and talking about the things he read. They were in the same introductory American History class, and Shitty spoke often and at-length. Some of it was the pleasure of hearing his own voice, but much of it also made good sense. The more Jack actually listened to Shitty talk, the more he grew to like him.

There was also a physical aspect. Shitty took the regular level of team affection--the cellies and helmut bumps and ass smacks--to another level. He was constantly in Jack’s space, throwing his arm around Jack’s shoulder when they walked to class together, eating off his plate in Commons, sprawling all over his bed. It made him profoundly uncomfortable, but there was also something exciting and, eventually, comforting about it--something Jack didn’t even know he wanted until he had it.

Since his overdose, Jack hadn’t a sip of alcohol. Drinking had been a large part of his life in the Q, and of his relationship with Kent, and part of why his overdose was so dangerous, so it seemed far safer not to do it. Jack knew, though, that alcohol was never his real problem. It took too long and too much of it to get to where a pill could get him almost immediately. Alcohol was just a symptom, an add-on. So, after his first Samwell goal, he surprised himself by smiling and letting himself be subjected to the traditional kegstand.

Even for heavily muscled young athlete, a kegstand is hard on someone who hasn’t had a drink in more than a year. Jack woke up on the floor of his dorm bathroom with a pounding head and a horrible taste in his mouth. Shitty was right next to him.

“What the fuck?” Jack muttered, pulling himself up to sit against the wall.

Shitty laughed and then groaned. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Jack-o. That was quite the confessional.”

“What confessional?” Jack’s heart began to race, his stomach lurching. He wondered if he was going to throw up.

Shitty smiled and laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “No worries, brah. It’s no big deal.”

“What did I tell you?” Jack’s voice came out colder than he’d intended.

“No need to turn into Ice Man,” Shitty replied, lying back down on the dirty tiles. “You didn’t give away any Canadian state secrets. You just told me you’re stressed about being here, about playing hockey, about people talking about you. And bro, who the fuck wouldn’t be?” Shitty cracked open an eye. “All you confessed was that you’re a person, Zimmermann.”

Jack surprised himself by laughing. “Was that a surprise?’

Shitty closed his eye again, but grinned. “Nope.”

It wasn’t as if they were suddenly best friends, but they were on their way. Without Jack even realizing it, a new protective layer wound around him.


	2. Through the Silence Something Throbs

By the end of his first year at Samwell, Jack was once again a person who could go about the business of daily living without near-constant panic. Some things were still hard, but he had started to enjoy things again, too. He did well in his classes, and the team did as well as could be expected with a big defensive hole to be filled. He still had anxiety before games, anxiety when someone recognized him, anxiety when he spoke to his father on the phone, but it was mostly manageable. The craving for pills to make it all easier never went away, but Jack kept it in check. He ate well and slept enough and lived by his routine. He went to therapy and, sometimes, talked. He did OK.

Jack and Shitty were good friends--maybe best friends. They were so different, Jack was rarely reminded of Kenny. Though it hadn’t manifested itself the way Jack’s had, Kenny had his own anxieties, his own heavy weights. Kenny was quick-tempered and could be cruel. Shitty seemed to have no cruelness in him. He strove, always, to be kind, to be friendly, to be enthusiastic, and to make sure people were having fun. He was big and loud and colorful and everything that Jack wasn’t, and as exhausting as he could be, Jack liked him--and relied on him--more and more as the months passed.

Jack’s panic attacks never fully stopped, though they did get less frequent. One day, Jack was rocking back and forth on his bed, trying to force himself to count out deep breaths, when Shitty let himself into Jack’s room. To Jack’s eternal gratitude, Shitty knew what was happening. Jack learned later that Shitty had a friend in high school with an anxiety disorder. Shitty sat with him, talked to him, helped him remember to breath. It was different than Kenny--Shitty was more patient, and also more smothering--but it was a world better than going through it alone.

Afterward, Jack was ashamed. His shame came out, as it often did, as cold cruelty. He tried his best to ignore Shitty, and when that didn’t make Shitty go away, he turned to nasty comments. Though hurt clouded Shitty’s face, he remained steady.

“I’ll go, if that’s what you really want,” Shitty said, standing in the doorway to Jack’s room. “But I’m coming back. You can be a dick to me, and I’m still coming back.”

Shitty did come back. Eventually, Jack gave a halting apology, which was accepted. They didn’t really talk about Jack’s disorder, or how much Shitty helped, but the next time Jack felt the cold nausea wash over him, he knocked on Shitty’s door. Lying on Shitty’s floor, waiting to stop shaking, he thought about how lucky he was to have been given another chance at friendship.

As the academic year came to an end, things got harder. Change would always be difficult for Jack. After weeks of discussions with his parents and his therapist, he’d agreed to go to some hockey camps over the summer. Several of the NHL teams were still interested in him, their recruitment efforts ongoing, and Jack felt--barely--strong enough to try.

The camps weren’t terrible. Jack played decent hockey, and he stayed safe. Beyond that, he retreated back into the cocoon from which he’d begun to emerge at Samwell. He didn’t talk to anybody--his roommates complained about his unfriendliness. He didn’t sleep well. He started to have more regular panic attacks. He’d learned how to ride them out, but it was harder alone. When his parents asked how he was faring, he lied.

Returning to Samwell for his second year was also hard, even as it was a relief to see the familiar campus, and to be swept up into Shitty’s ridiculous embrace. They would both be living in the “Haus” now, in rooms connected by a shared bathroom. Jack was glad to get out of the dorms, much as he dreaded the parties for which the Haus was famous. He’d never admit it, but he was also glad that Shitty was still going to be only a few steps away.

As he adjusted to his second year at Samwell, something else changed for Jack. With everything that happened--Kent, the drugs, the draft--in the long year between his overdose and his matriculation, he never so much as thought about another person’s body. As he got stronger, he occasionally remembered Kent’s, remembered the fast, fumbling, gasping pleasure of it, but he tried not to. It just made him ache.

Even with all of the ways his brain plagued him, though, Jack was still a twenty-two year old man. He’d originally thought the final combination of meds they’d settled on were going to be permanent libido suppressors, and he was kind of OK with that. But things leveled out after a while, and his previous sex drive returned. Or came back with more vengeance, maybe. Hard as Jack was on himself, all day every day, Samwell was just not as taxing as the Q. The lead up to the Memorial Cup and Jack’s breakdown and overdose had been so physically and mentally exhausting, and full of so many chemicals, that even though he and Kenny were having sex, it often came not from physical desire so much as emotional starvation. Jack needed Kenny like he needed the drugs. With that all behind him, he slowly started to realize he wanted sex for its own sake. While he was absolutely beginning to notice boys--his classmates, and, on a few horrifying occasions, his teammates--he was also noticing girls, and his access to them was too easy to resist for long.

Jack knew he was bisexual. His attractions had been equal opportunity since childhood. While his relationship with Kent had certainly been the most intense of his life, he’d also been with girls in the Q, and enjoyed it. At Samwell, girls may have initially been chosen--or not even chosen as much as allowed--for being as far as possible from Kent. Though Jack would never admit it, they may have been chosen for their accessibility. The girls who surrounded him as soon as his second SMH season started made it very easy to tentatively reach back out into sexuality.

One post-game night, a girl named Samantha ended up in Jack’s room. Jack wasn’t drunk, having sipped his way slowly through a couple of beers while Samantha told him about her childhood in Arizona and her tough first semester chemistry class. Jack had done little more than nod and smile, answering direct questions with a few words. Samantha was aware that Jack was a hockey star, and said she’d been at the game, but didn’t seem to know anything about Jack’s past, or about his father. That part was nice. He hadn’t even needed to invite her up to his room. He’d simply stood and looked at her, saying, ‘I’m gonna head up to my room…” and she’d smiled, put down her Solo cup, and followed him up the stairs.

In his room, Jack looked at Samantha again, saying nothing. She was pretty--short and curvy with a round face and smooth dark skin. She had dark hair and a wide smile with the shadows of dimples on her cheeks. “You look nervous,” she said. “No need. I know this isn’t a big thing.” She shrugged. “Just some fun, right?” She reached toward where he was still standing with his back against the door and laid her hands against his chest. “Do you want to kiss me?”

He was surprised to find that he really did want to kiss her. Once he started, it got easier. It was nothing like kissing Kenny--so much softer and slower, with her laughing against his mouth when he nipped at her lip--but it wasn’t new, either. He remembered, as he pulled her closer to him and leaned down to run his mouth along the line of her jaw, how this felt. He remembered how this was good.

She’d ended up on her knees right there, Jack’s back still against that door. She grinned up at him as she opened his jeans. When she put her lips around him, he hissed. It had been more than two years since anybody touched him like that, and for most of it, he hadn’t even been aware of what was missing. It felt incredible, and it took almost no time before he gently pushed her away. “Is everything OK?” She looked confused. “It felt like you were enjoying that.”

“I was,” Jack breathed, trying to get his heart to stop thumping quite so fast. “Too much. It’s...been a while. I was going to…” He trailed off, hoping she’d grant mercy.

She chuckled. “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ve got nowhere to be. Why don’t I finish this, and then we’ll move to the bed, OK?”

Jack just nodded and tipped his head back against the wall.

Afterward, Samantha took off her clothes, and then helped with Jack’s as well, grabbing his hand and leading him to the bed. They made out for a long time, with him running his hands all over her smooth skin, remembering what it was like to feel someone else’s body so close. She gave gentle instruction as he brought her off on his fingers, her mouth hot against his shoulder. It was nothing like Kenny--Jack fleetingly wondered if anything would ever be again--but it was its own kind of nice.

The next morning, Jack woke up and immediately began worrying. What were his obligations now? Was this the beginning of a relationship? Jack liked Samantha, but he didn’t want a girlfriend--he was just barely able to figure out how to function as it was. When Samantha woke up, she put his fears at rest without him needing to admit them. “That was fun,” she said as she pulled on her clothes. “You’re so serious. You should let your hair down more.” She grabbed his phone from the nightstand and put in her number. “Text me sometime if you want.”

He didn’t text her, but he did see her again. They ran into each other in Commons a couple of weeks later, and she was as calm and smiling as he remembered. She chirped him gently about a recent game, then sat down with him uninvited to have lunch. It happened again a few days after that, and he realized he didn’t mind at all. She made things simple. They slept together a few more times, hung out a few more than that. She never asked for, or seemed to want, anything more. Eventually, she started seeing someone seriously and they drifted apart, but, without even trying, she’d pulled away one of Jack’s tightly wound layers. He didn’t even miss it.

In the spring of his sophomore year, Jack’s mental health was in the best place it had been in years. He’d become close with another friend, the quiet, snarky, badass first-year who had taken over managing the hockey team in the second semester. Her name was Larissa, but they called her Lardo. Jack immediately liked her for her silent competence, her rare smile, and her ability to manage Shitty. She seemed to understand things without him having to figure out a way to say them.

As expected, a house full of hockey players followed the race for the Stanley Cup very closely. Jack managed to be absent from the Haus for most of the games, as he had for the regular season Aces games the boys had watched together. There was no way he would be able to watch Kent play with an audience. When the final Cup game came, though, he had to see it. He made an excuse about a late paper and hid in his room, watching on the small screen of his laptop.

He felt like he held his breath the whole game. The Aces dominated it from the start, there was never really any fear they’d lose, but still, Jack felt every pass, every hit. Kent put the puck in the net once and assisted once, and Jack’s heart was in his throat. He wanted--badly--to be happy for Kent. He was watching his former best friend achieve their shared dream, and he knew he should be jumping up and down, doing cellies in his room. Instead, by the time Kent hoisted the Cup over his head, Jack was shaking, sobbing, so jealous and angry and sad he could barely breathe. It was supposed to be him. If he’d just been able to keep it together, if he’d just been stronger, it would be him.

Jack’s parents called after the game, but he let it go to voicemail. Late that night, Kent called, so drunk he was slurring. Jack didn’t pick up, but he listened to the message as soon as it came through. Kent sounded happy, a party clear in the background. “I wish you were here,” he said. “I miss you.” Jack didn’t go back to sleep.

For the next few days, Jack hid inside himself. He avoided calls from his parents, avoided Shitty and Lardo, and spoke only when necessary. He took over-long runs and spent excessive time in the weight room, and when he wasn’t working out or in class, he stayed in his room. Kent called again, then two more times. Jack never answered, but continued to listen to the messages. In the last one, Kent sounded drunk again, and said that if Jack didn’t call him back, just to say he was OK, then Kent was coming to see him, whether he liked it or not. Jack shivered when he heard it, but assumed Kent was making an empty threat--he had to be very busy with post-Cup press.

Two days later, Jack walked into the Haus after class and found Kent in the kitchen, surrounded by what looked to be at least half the SMH team. Everybody was talking loudly, slapping Kent on the back, asking him questions, taking selfies. Kent was grinning and signing autographs. Ransom and Holster, the freshman D-men, were trying to convince him to autograph the fridge.

Kent looked up as the door swung closed behind Jack, and his expression changed instantly. His wide grin was replaced by something smaller, more tentative. “Zimms,” he said, voice much softer. “Hey.”

“Parse.” Jack’s voice came out cold. He was happy it came out at all. “What are you doing here?”

Jack caught Shitty’s confused frown. He wished, absurdly, that Lardo was with them. He felt like she’d come closer to getting it than anybody else.

“I came to see you?” Kent answered, still trying to smile. “Been a long time.” He gestured at the half-circle of players around him. “Your team has been telling me how well you did this season.”

Jack scowled. “We didn’t even make it to the Frozen Four.” There was no reason for his teammates to lie about it--it wasn’t like Kent couldn’t look it up.

The assembled hockey players’ expressions varied from anger to shame. They were all used to Jack’s intensity and perfectionism, but he wasn’t usually cruel. “Bro, are you OK?” Shitty asked, taking a step toward Jack.

“Fine,” Jack said, sharp. “Parse, if you have something you want to say to me, come on upstairs.”

“OK.” Kent’s smile was gone, but he didn’t look angry so much as sad. When Jack turned to stalk up the stairs, he forced another big grin at the boys. “Nice to meet you.” Then he followed Jack.

Jack whirled on Kent the minute the door to his room closed. “Why the fuck are you here? Did you really need to come rub it in? Was it not enough to keep calling, you had to see my face?”

Kent stepped back until he thudded against the door. “I’m...I’m not here to rub anything in, Zimms. I just wanted to see you. I wanted...I wanted you to be there. I wanted you to know I…”

“You wanted me to know you’re a better hockey player than I am,” Jack spit. “You wanted me to know that you succeeded where I failed. You wanted me to know you’re a fucking superstar. Well, I already knew that, Kenny. You’re fucking everywhere, it’s not like I could have missed it.”

Kent’s face darkened. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to apologize for that? I just won a fucking Stanley Cup, Jack. I got a Calder last year. If it were you…”

“But it’s NOT me!” Jack yelled. Even on the ice, he wasn’t typically much of a shouter, but the whole Haus probably heard him. “It was supposed to be me, and it wasn’t. And you just had to make sure I know that.” He took a step toward Kent, shaking with rage. “Well, I know.”

Kent’s hands balled into fists. “This isn’t fair,” he seethed. “I would have been happy for you. I wanted...I wanted us to do this together. I’m not the one who left.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “Left? That’s what we’re calling it?” He laughed, and it was a gross, disfigured sound. “I didn’t leave, Kenny. I overdosed. I overdosed, and then I detoxed, and then I went to rehab. Want to know what detoxing is like? Want me to tell you about the sweating and the puking and the shaking and the fucking nightmares? Do you wish we could have done that together, too?” Jack barely heard his own voice. He knew he was saying things he shouldn’t, things he probably didn’t even mean, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “My life was destroyed, and you’re the golden child of the NHL.”

Kent’s eyes flashed, more grey than green. “I didn’t make you take those pills. Do you have any idea how guilty I felt? How scared I was? I thought it was my fault. But it wasn't. Goddammit, it wasn’t. Don’t try to put it on me.”

Jack sighed. “No, it wasn’t your fault. But this is. You never should have come here.” He looked around the room, noticing, as he hadn’t in months, how shabby it was. “You were always jealous. You always wanted what I had--the money, the big name. Well, you’ve got it now. Isn’t that enough? Can’t you leave me alone?”

Kent shook his head. “You’re such a fucker, Zimmermann. You just...you don’t fucking get it.” He stepped forward, his fisted hands suddenly pressing against Jack’s chest. “I miss you. Every day. All the time. Still. And it won’t go away.”

The room was silent. Jack and Kent looked at each other. They were both breathing hard. There was a flush across Kent’s cheeks. Jack’s mind spun, nearly panicked. He felt laid bare, all of his protective layers gone with Kent in front of him, staring at him. “I love you, Zimms.” Kent’s voice cracked when he said it.

“I kind of hate you,” Jack answered. He didn’t back away.

“I know.”

Jack moved forward, pushing Kent’s body back toward the door. One hand was at Kent’s hip, the other suddenly on the back of his neck. “You shouldn’t have come here, Kenny,” he muttered, his mouth already moving toward Kent’s.

“I know,” Kent mumbled again, parting his lips, moving one fisted hand from Jack’s chest to tangle his fingers in the back of Jack’s hair. “I know.”

They kissed hard, mouths open, panting. Jack bit hard at Kent’s lower lip, and Kent moaned into him, pushing his hips forward and wrapping his arm tight around Jack’s neck. Jack felt himself falling, felt everything that would happen if he didn’t stop. He felt the hot, bright, hard pull, the climax, the come-down. He felt the detox and rehab and rebuilding. This was a terrible idea, the worst possible idea. He didn’t stop.

Kent’s hands were everywhere, roaming up the back of Jack’s shirt, then squeezing his ass hard over his shorts. “Jesus, you’re even more amazing than you used to be.” He pulled back long enough to tug Jack’s shirt over his head. “You never stop being incredible, Zimms.”

Jack hummed in response, not really even hearing Kent’s words, focused on unbuttoning his jeans. “Come here,” he ordered, pulling Kent back toward his bed by the waistband. “Take your pants off.”

Kent complied, leaning over to pull his shoes off, then shimmying out of his jeans. Jack tackled him to the mattress, kissing him hard again, unthinking. It was rough and uncoordinated, both of them already hard and pushing against one another. “Take these off, too,” Kent muttered, pushing his hands under the waistband of both Jack’s shorts and his underwear and shoving them off his ass. “Get naked for me.”

Jack pushed out of the remainder of his clothes, then stripped Kent of his boxers. Kent leaned back and pulled his shirt over his head and then they fell together again. They gasped into each other’s mouths, their hands pulling at whatever overheated skin they could find. Jack bit down on Kent’s shoulder when Kent wrapped his hand around Jack’s cock, dry and hard. “Fuck!”

“Do you want…?” Kent trailed off, moving his mouth down Jack’s chest, biting at his pectorals. “You can fuck me.”

They’d done it before, what seemed like a decade ago, but Jack hadn’t, with a man, since. He hadn’t really even thought about it. As soon as Kent said it, he wanted it terribly. “Yeah.” He pulled away.

“Do you have condoms?” They hadn’t used them, before.

Jack nodded, reaching over Kent to his desk. “I don’t have lube.”

“I don’t care. Condom’s lubricated enough.”

It wasn’t, of course. Jack went slow, because he wasn’t a sadist, but he could tell it hurt anyway. “Should I stop?” he asked, halfway in and panting hard, holding himself up on his arms and fighting to maintain his position.

“No. Fuck. No. Just… ugh…” Kent whined under him, pushing his hips back. “Just do it, fuck.”

Jack took him at his word, continuing to push slowly in. It was tight to the point of painful, but the pain was good, too. It gave him something to focus on that wasn’t the smear of freckles across Kent’s bare shoulders, or the half-healed game bruises along his ribs.

They both swore, pushing against one another, never really getting into the right rhythm. It wasn’t at all like it had been before--they didn’t know each other’s bodies anymore. Still, it was tight and hot, and before Jack knew it, he was leaning over Kent’s rounded back, pushing in harder than he’d intended, groaning into Kent’s ear. “Jerk yourself off, I can’t reach. I’m trying not to come.”

Kent nodded, pulling furiously at his cock, making more noise than was probably wise in a Haus full of people. He came just before Jack did, spurting across Jack’s comforter and then falling into the mess, trying to catch his breath as Jack rode his own orgasm out on top of him.

Jack pulled out almost immediately, too soon for either of them, hissing. He got up on shaky legs and binned the condom. He didn’t say anything as he laid back down across the foot of the bed.

It took Kent a moment to speak. “I’m sorry I’m here.”

Jack nodded. He didn’t know what to say. Already, the spasms of joy were gone, replaced by empty, hopeless self-loathing.

A few minutes later, Kent got up. Jack turned toward the wall, not watching him clean himself off (using Jack’s t-shirt, because some things actually don’t change) and get dressed. Kent paused at the door, and Jack waited for what he would say, but it never came. Instead, he opened it, walked through, and shut it softly behind him.

Jack stayed where he was, listening, as Kent walked down the stairs. He heard Kent talking to the boys for a few minutes, then heard the front door open and close. Knowing he’d likely be getting a visit from Shitty soon, Jack hauled himself up and into the shower.

After Kent’s visit, Jack felt like he was back where he’d begun. Sure, he wasn’t abusing pills, but that was pretty much the only positive. He wouldn’t talk to Shitty or Lardo. He scowled at everybody he came across as he went about his day. He lied to his parents and therapist with increasing frequency, swearing things were fine. He had more panic attacks, and they lasted longer. He worried about the hockey camps he’d be attending. He worried about what would happen the next time somebody offered him something he knew he shouldn’t have. He worried about disappointing his parents, and now his friends as well. He didn’t sleep. He continued to exercise more than was probably wise. He counted the days until classes ended with dread. He might not be happy at Samwell right now, but at least he knew what to expect.

Then, at the end of season banquet, Jack was named captain for the following year. He tried to force a smile, but he knew it was mostly a grimace. He gave a short, halting speech full of platitudes. He didn’t even feel Shitty and Lardo hugging him, or the rest of the team bumping his fists and smacking his shouders. He knew it was an honor, knew he should be happy and proud. All he felt was scared, certain that this would be one more thing for him to fuck up, one more way in which he could disappoint everybody he cared about.

Right before Jack left for the airport, his room packed away for the summer, Shitty came in without knocking and sat down on the stripped bed. “Look at me, Zimmermann,” he ordered.

Standing across the room, shoving his last few shirts into his suitcase, Jack stopped and did as directed, meeting Shitty’s gaze calmly.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Shitty began, “but whatever it is, if you need me, I’m never more than a call away. You know that, right?” Shitty’s face was unusually serious. “And I’ll come to you, if you need me. Nothing I’d love more than an excuse to get out of Boston.”

Jack tried to play it off. “Sure, Shits. But I’m good. I’m fine.”

Shitty snorted. “You are definitely not fine. But you don’t have to tell me what’s going on. Just...call me if you need me, OK? Anytime. I mean it.”

Gazing at the ridiculous man on his bed, in his NASCAR tank top and Birkenstock sandals, mirrored sunglasses perched on his flow, Jack smiled a tiny, but real, smile. “OK,” he said. He wished he could explain everything to Shitty now, but there wasn’t time, and he wouldn’t even know where to start. “Thank you.”

Shitty got up and wrapped him in an uninvited but not unappreciated hug. “I love you, Jack,” he said. “Have a good summer.”

Jack swallowed hard, surprised to feel tears in his throat. “You too.” It only lasted a moment--not even long enough for Shitty’s footsteps to disappear--but for a minute, he felt like it was going to be OK.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come visit me on [Tumblr](https://coffeewithconsequences.tumblr.com/) or read the rest of my fic here at [Archive of Our Own](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeWithConsequences/works)!


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